Karl introduces himself

K - I practise a traditional form of kung fu from Southern China known as Fujian White Crane Kung Fu. I started about a year and a half ago, when I met Dave for the first time. I had never done any martial arts before, and I knew nothing about kung fu. I picked it at random out of a few different martial arts that I had read about on the Internet, and a year and a half later, here I am.

Dave introduces himself

D - I've been practising kung fu for nearly twelve years now and, like you, I just fell into this style. I began doing martial arts because I got beat up at school when I was about sevent
and decided I wanted to learn to defend myself. So I started off learning freestyle karate on and off for about two years, until I found a random club in Crawley where my teacher Dennis used to teach and began learning kung fu with him doing Soft Style, the less mainstream White Crane form of T'ai Chi known as Suang Yang Bei Her Rou Ruan Chuen. It was the first class I could get to, and I've stuck with him ever since.

A word on Dennis

D - Dennis is Chinese, from Singapore. He learnt this style of kung fu from Master Ang Liang Huat who set up the Nam Yang Pugilistic Association, which is quite a well-known club in Singapore. Dennis then came over to the UK to study and set up a club at UCL which has been running for over twenty years, and where he still teaches at now.

Dennis is a very strong person, and his kung fu is absolutely amazing. He's always got something new that you've never seen before, that shows you that there's a long, long way to go before you stop learning - if you ever stop learning, which I'm not sure you do.

Multiforms

K - So you actually started off doing freestyle karate?

D - It was karate with no forms, based on the Korean Tae Kwondo, a bit of a mishmash of different bits and pieces, but it basically came down to freestyle, based on competition fighting. It was just practising techniques and then sparring, which gave me a basic sort of grounding, but it was nowhere near for me as good as this style.

I also tried a French form of kickboxing, just for a few weeks. I am still tempted to learn and look at other styles, but really only just to help me understand Fujian White Crane better. Because it's such a deep and rich style, sometimes I think just looking at other things helps me to understand the meaning of the movements and forms more.

K - Sometimes I watch really good athletes jumping hurdles, at the way they move their hips, and I think, "That's not a bad principle," but actually it's a kung fu principle. It's not just about fighting but about finding the most efficient moves. Kung fu always seems so much more efficient and slip-streamed when all the stuff which is just for show or not actually part of a good principle has been worn away by doing it a billion times.

Since I've never done any other martial arts I can't really tell if they're actual kung fu moves, except for the stuff I've seen in films, and that's all been filtered through Hollywood...

Speaking of films

K - The Western ones are really funny, since all the emphasis is on having high kicks. "Charlie's Angels" is a really good example of that because it uses what could have been kung fu moves in the Western way of looking at things, ie. "Big is strong" and "muscular is powerful" and a really high kick is better than a fast kick.

Obviously it wouldn't make good entertainment to show someone kicking someone else in the side of the knee so that it breaks, although it would be efficient. In Hong Kong or Chinese kung fu films the action doesn't look the same - it's a lot more acrobatic, more playful, not just stick-up fists. In the same way it's a lot more brutal - still playful, but brutal as in a lot more efficient.

D - It's certainly more realistic in terms of how you should fight in a fight. That is, if you've been trained to fight you wouldn't be doing high kicks and spinning kicks, and things like that. Everytime you throw a technique, you make yourself vulnerable.

and all sorts of stuff I never thought about before I started kung fu

K - Why would punching with your fist be more powerful than punching with two fingers? There's the same amount of mass, the same amount of force, and it's the same hand, just another shape of it. But two fingers have a much smaller area, so all the force is being transited through this minute area, meaning that it's a lot more focused on that power.

D - The higher forms of kung fu are things like pressure-point striking, and the soft style is using people's force against them. It's hard to strike a pressure point with a whole fist. You need to use the smaller weapons like the Phoenix Eye knuckles and the finger tips, which are simply more accurate.

Weapons?

D - Kung fu is traditionally taught using a number of forms, and the sixth form in our basic syllabus is a 6-ft staff, or your own staff sawed off to eyebrow level, so mine is about 5'8". The ninth pattern is broadsword, seen in most films with weapons, slightly curved. Southern broadswords are firm, while Northern broadswords are wobbly.

K - The wobbliness is part of the actual energy transfer.

D - It's like a whip, you shake it tremendously fast so that it vibrates the energy as well, not just cuts and slices. Different styles have different forms of energy, and White Crane has a shaking, vibrating power which is quite unusual, and also why this style takes so long to learn. It is very difficult to transfer energy from your stance into your waist into your hands so that you get this vibration. First you learn the forms to get the energy into your hands, elbows, and other bits. Then you learn the weapons to get your energy beyond your hands, so that you can focus your energy into the tip of the staff, or sword, or any other weapon.

It's the next level up, extending your energy beyond your body, and it does take a lot of coordination to pick up a piece of wood and then try to make it vibrate, instead of just your hands. You can't learn weapons straight away because you must first train your hands to use the weapons. It's partly tradition, partly art form, but also body movement, because it trains your body to move in new ways, and energy, because you learn to bring the power out through different places. The theory is that the staff pattern can be applied to stools, benches, or whatever else falls under hand.

Far East meets Far West

D - What you were saying about how Westerners use force and Chinese don't is so true... I've been to China twice now, to the Yong Chun district of Fujian province where this style originated. We demonstrated for each other, our club our style, and Yong Chun the original Yong Chun White Crane. It was really interesting to see how the main difference between the two is that Westerners use a lot of brute strength and a lot more speed, while the Chinese are much slower, more precise, concentrating not on speed, but on technique.

"Who's here to learn how to fight and who's here just to lose weight?"

K - My reasons for beginning kung fu were twofold: one, a thinner waist, and two, kung fu is cool! I remember once, three or four months into training, everyone was just going through the moves and suddenly Dave shouted: "Who's here to learn how to fight and who's here just to lose weight? Who thinks this is a good workout?" That's when it dawned on me that I'm not really here anymore for that. If I just wanted to lose weight I could have gone to aerobics.

It's good to learn how to fight, good for your brain, not just the fighting part, but being flexible. It's a mindset, rather than having bulging biceps. Many potential fighting situations never occur because the brawling party would never attack you, because they sense that there's something there which they don't know about.

There is also the physical part, knowing that I can push myself through so much in training. I think "this is impossible" and actually I've done it twice now, which means that I could probably pick up some other skills that I thought I might not be able to do. It expands into what you think about yourself, and what you're capable of.

"High-speed chess"

D - It's not just training your body. Sparring is like a high-speed chess game. It's supposed to be reflexive, but a lot of tactics and strategy go into it which push you mentally as well. You use bits of your brain that you might not ever use otherwise, so it increases both your intelligence and the way you relate to your body.

K - If you're scared and worked up with adrenalin racing and you start thinking, you instantly get hit. You're too slow because you're not focusing. But once you start focusing, and you don't think about anything, suddenly your body will take over and you'll start doing the moves that you've been doing a million times before... And as soon as you think "this is going all right," you've already lost it.

D - There are people who react, and people who think. You're a thinker.

K - How can you not?

D - Trying to do both is the difficult thing, striking that balance between thinking about it and just letting your body do what it's got to do. If I'm genuinely being attacked, I will try to react, to just let my body do what it's doing and observe the way my opponent is moving. I try to find his weak points, his rhythms, so that I can break his rhythms and try to play with him. I stay at a level where I can see the way he's moving and just outdo him. Because the ultimate thing is to anticipate what he's going to do and hammer him.

Fool's mate

K - When I'm sparring against Dave, I feel like I'm in one of those films with the high-speed shutter going, and I'm moving at half-speed. I see his movement coming, and I know what I'm about to do, but as soon as I prepare to block the punch, it's changed direction - and I'm moving into the punch! I'm just at the level where I can see what I'm doing wrong, but I can't do anything about it yet.

"Everything is just kung fu."

K - When I started, I was so happy that I could find a way of applying kung fu to everything i did - in programming, in conversations with people, even just going through doors: opening the door, stepping through it, putting my foot on the other side of it, just because I could. It was always there in the back of my head, at another level.

I can't see a natural drop-off point as far as I'm concerned. I can't see myself stopping and going back to not doing it ever again, just growing old without it. I have to keep going. It's nice but at the same time scary knowing I've started something which I won't be able to end, which is obviously a good thing.

D - You start off learning kung fu as something you're trying to do, and eventually you become it. You and kung fu just merge. It's part of you and not a separate entity anymore. It's just the way you are, the way you move. Everything is just kung fu.

Links

Fujian White Crane Kung Fu

FWC City & Islington